5+1 Quick Blurbs

Will the ability to do massive amounts of data analysis on relatively cheap commodity hardware cause further income inequality, with the inflows moving towards those able to harness this power and away from those who can’t, or will big data be a rising tide that lifts all boats?
Right now I think the former is true, but as big data starts to move away from social media and web ad optimizations and more towards agriculture, smart water, and smart energy, I hope the latter will prevail.

Data hand tools: grep, awk, sed, rinse repeatYou’ve mastered SQL and use Excel with your eyes closed. But do you know the super-fast, ultra-powerful basics? Being on a Windows machine is no excuse, configure Cygwin and start to feel the power of tools built 30 years ago that you want in your toolbox: grep, awk, sed (and regex).

This is what cheap electronics look like.

This is what cheap electronics look like

My sister recently told me that my five year old nephew loves coming home and going straight to his math workbook to do his ‘work.’ So I thought I’d get him something to really stoke his love of math – a calculator. I know we’re at a pivot point for super-cheap computation, but this image brought that point home like nothing else I’ve seen.